On March 2, 2022, California Attorney General Rob Bonta urged individuals affected by the T-Mobile breach in 2021 to take advantage of resources to assist with preventing or responding to identity theft. According to the consumer alert, more than 53 million individuals were affected by the breach, including over 6 million California residents. The compromised
Privacy and Cybersecurity Are Driving Compliance Initiatives According to Corporate Counsel
In a recent report by the Association of Corporate Counsel, a survey of chief legal counsels provided confirmation of what we’ve been saying for a while: expectations of increased regulatory enforcement, and privacy and cybersecurity are driving organizations to dedicate more efforts to compliance. In fact, 64 percent of those surveyed responded that they expected…
Data Minimization: What Is It and Why Practice It?
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) first launched the concept of data minimization, which states that a data controller should limit the collection of personal information to what is directly relevant and necessary to accomplish a specified purpose. This seems like a simple concept: an entity should only collect personal information that is…
CAAG Announces Investigative Sweep of Loyalty Programs’ Compliance with CCPA
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is serious about compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). So serious, that on January 28, 2022, also known as Data Privacy Day, he announced that his office was commencing an investigative “sweep” of “businesses operating loyalty programs in California” and sent notices of noncompliance to businesses requiring them…
New Poll Underscores Growing Support for National Data Privacy Legislation
Over half of all Americans would support a federal data privacy law, according to a recent poll from Politico and Morning Consult. The poll found that 56 percent of registered voters would either strongly or somewhat support a proposal to “make it illegal for social media companies to use personal data to recommend content via…
Meta Hit with Lawsuits Over Allegations of Promoting Hate Speech
Meta has been hit with two related lawsuits totaling over $150 billion in its first major legal challenge since rebranding. The suits (one filed in California Superior Court and the other in the UK) come from a class representing the Rohingya, a minority Muslim population that has suffered severe systematic violence in Myanmar.…
Data Show Autonomous Cars May Drive More Safely than Human Drivers
IDTechEx, which provides market research on emerging technology, analyzed California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) autonomous vehicle collision reports. Per California regulation, every company testing autonomous vehicles in California must notify the state’s DMV of any collision. IDTechEx reviewed those reports, which cover about a two-and-a-half-year period. James Jeffs, IDTechEx’s technology analyst, said that “[i]t…
Fertility Clinic That Sent Sensitive Email to a Patient’s Work Group Faces Lawsuit
A fertility clinic in California cannot escape a lawsuit brought by a patient after the clinic sent private information to the individual’s entire work team.
The clinic, Lane Fertility Institute for Education and Research (Lane), emailed a client regarding an embryo transfer procedure she had undergone the prior year, seeking information about her resulting pregnancy.…
Ancestry.com Prevails in Yearbook Database Class Action
This week, Ancestry.com Inc. prevailed in a class action which alleged that it misappropriated consumers’ images and violated their privacy by using such data to solicit and sell their services and products. The court granted Ancestry.com’s motion to dismiss the amended complaint with prejudice because the plaintiffs “did not cure the complaint’s deficiencies” after being…
Virginia Law Bans Local Police Use of Facial Recognition Technology
The state of Virginia recently enacted a law banning local law enforcement and campus police departments from using facial recognition technology. Facial recognition technology is defined as an “electronic system for enrolling, capturing, extracting, comparing, and matching an individual’s geometric facial data to identify individuals in photos, videos, or real time.” The law states that…